BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
LENIN AND HIS RIVALS. by Donald W. Treadgold; Methuen, English price 35/-. T is a commonplace that the flickering fires of the fluctuating present throw ever-changing patterns of light and shade on the past. The glare of events in Russia since 1917 distorts the pre-revolutionary period, highlighting | (continued on next page)
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(continued from previous page) Lenin and the Bolsheviks and blurring other individuals and groups. "Professor Treadgold must be congratulated for allowing this distortion to influence merely the title, and not the text, of his valuable study of the emerging political parties of Russia in the years 1898-1906. Valuable-to whom? To the student of Russian history, certainly: but the work deserves, I think, a wider public. Professor Treadgold’s achievement is to have identified himself in turn with the main party leaders-Chernov, Lenin, Martov, Miliukov-seeing through their eyes the rapidly changing course of events, interpreting those events in terms of their particular ideologies, and cevising from those interpretations tactics appropriate to the present and to the anticipated future. The general historian and the political scientist will find here valuable material on the relation of ideology to political practice. The sociologist may treat the work as a case study in the unintended consequences of social action. And the general reader who is willing first to acquire some background knowledge of the period (for the book demands this) will find himself in a different and fascinating world, in which parties are run by intellectuals and policies derived from sociological analyses. In his conclusion, Professor Treadgold tries to explain why the revolution of 1905 failed. The opposition groups were too rationalistic, insufficiently empirical; they did not grasp what the peasant masses really wanted; and the Centre mistakenly sought a Popular Front with the Leninist Left. These inferences are debatable: but it is not the least of his merits that the author provides sufficient material to enable one
to debate his conclusions.
R.H.
B.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 13
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323BEFORE THE REVOLUTION New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 13
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